Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wednesday August 26, 2009 @08:23AM
from the break-out-the-popcorn dept.

Mr_Blank writes to mention that the United States' largest business lobby is pushing for a public trial to examine the evidence of global warming and have a judge make a ruling on whether human beings are warming the planet to dangerous effect. "The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court. The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a 'waste of time' and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be 'frivolous.' [...] Environmentalists say the chamber's strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science — and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end."

I was once at a standardisation meeting in which the US delegation demanded that the claim that "a pure Poisson process is time stationary" be put to a vote. It's the American way, democracy in action. Truth is decided by majority vote.

What would be better is if groups with actual political power in this area are forced to release their raw data and the method by which they arrive at their conclusions. It would be interesting to see if/how many/if any data points they reject to conform the results to their predetermined conclusions. If they were to release the raw data AND how they arrived at their conclusions and it shows they're not lying, then they would gain a lot more credibility outside of the hippie crowd.

I'm no treehugger. However I believe in personal responsibility so I do what I can to conserve, and when I can afford to build my dream home I plan to utilize both photovoltaic electricity and geothermal climate control.

However, I'm against the BANANA and NIMBY mentalities: whenever groups DO try to act upon green efforts (Cape Wind/Nantucket Sound Wind Farm, nuclear plants, new natural gas depots, fuel refineries using new "green" refining technologies and methods, etc.), self-proclaimed "green" politicians seek to oppose those efforts at every turn - most notably (the late) Ted Kennedy, the man who opposed the Nantucket Sound wind far, because it would be "unsightly" as he cruises in his yacht.

What we need is cooperation from all parties: unlike the Al Gore mentality, it does not have to be all-or-nothing. Because we are decades or centuries away from "Mr. Fusion" and "antimatter" generators, we need to make use of what we can today. Solar, water, and wind power will work only in certain locations of the globe, so we have no choice but to continue to use fossil fuels, nukes, and renewable sources like trees.

Also, electric cars aren't quite there yet (not until if you run out of a charge you can just walk a couple of miles to the nearest charging station and borrow a charged, lightweight ultracapacitor to get you there to recharge). The range just isn't there, current li-ion technologies don't handle deep cycling well, and the price needs to come WAY down before it makes good economic sense for the average driver to buy one. Right now, if you drive the average 12,000 miles per year, even a hybrid is a stupid economic choice based on the average cost premium over a conventional car. It makes sense if you drive 30,000+ miles (a hybrid would make economic sense for me) but such drivers are not the norm.

So there has to be a happy medium. I say build the nukes, but have a decent plan for recycling and/or storing the waste. Build new coal plants, or better yet, trash incinerators, but just make sure they have moden scrubbers in place, as well as a responsible ash disposal plan in place. That doesn't mean to stop investments in fusion resources, but since we don't have it yet, we can't just quit fossil fuels cold turkey.

Also, ethanol is not a good solution here in the US (corn is a poor choice), and I'm not too fond of the idea of soy-based biodiesels putting one of the 8 major allergens (soy proteins) in the air in heavy doses.

Al Gore's "inconvenient truth" (really Big Fat Lie, which makes him Big Fat Liar) not only was less scientifically accurate than the sci-fi movie "The Day After Tomorrow", but is actually banned from being shown to schoolkids in Britain because it is so inaccurate.

Bullshit. They found nine "errors", assertions were the facts were disputed - things like the snowcap on Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to human activity (no one argues that it is disappearing). The film can be released to schoolkids as long as

I'm just angry that everyone is so damn caught up with climate change. There are other problems that exist now like heavy metal buildup in the food chain and red tides. Maybe we should worry about things that are having environmental effects here and now as opposed to things that may have effects at some unspecified time in the future.

Mr Justice Burton [i.e., the judge who made the ruling in question] said he had no complaint about Gore's central thesis that climate change was happening and was being driven by emissions from humans. However, the judge said nine statements in the film were not supported by mainstream scientific consensus.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families was not under a duty to forbid the film

In other words, the film must be taught as an educational resource, rather than as a political instrument. I've had plenty of math books (even at the college level) with more than 9 errors in them. Even the famously-inscrutable series of CS books by Donald Knuth has a lengthy list of errata [stanford.edu]. Given that we're talking about a popular film about a politically-sensitive issue, I feel that 9 errors is more than forgivable.

It also certainly wouldn't hurt for children to be taught how to analyze a controversial issue from a scientific and logical perspective -- although it's still somewhat rare, this sort of "Theory of Knowledge" curriculum is slowly making its way into High Schools in the US and Europe, which I feel is a Very Good Thing.

For a serious discussion about "An Inconvenient Truth" and judges ruling see this article [realclimate.org] att realclimate.org. Here is an excerpt from the article by Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann

:

There are a number of points to be brought out here. First of all, "An Inconvenient Truth" was a movie and people expecting the same depth from a movie as from a scientific paper are setting an impossible standard. Secondly, the judge's characterisation of the 9 points is substantially flawed. He appears to have put words in

That said, it makes complete sense to get the CO2 emissions under control

How do you purpose to do that without forcing China and India to halt their development at gunpoint? If global warming is primarily man made then we are already fucked. The West could cut our standard of living to a stone age level and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in the end.

About the only technology that could make a meaningful difference in the end is nuclear and we've largely abandoned it because of a vocal minority of people scared by anything with the word "nuclear" in the title. The renewables that are currently in production don't scale well and will never be able to displace coal and nuclear for the base load.

The Board of Businesses is not trying to get the courts to decide whether or not Global Warming is a reality. They are not even trying to get the courts to decide whether or not Global Warming is caused by human-created emissions. They are trying to get the courts to rule on whether Global Warming will be _harmful_ to humans.

EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the agency based its proposed finding that global warming is a danger to public health "on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare."

The EPAâ(TM)s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, as proposed in April, warned that warmer temperatures would lead to "the increased likelihood of more frequent and intense heat waves, more wildfires, degraded air quality, more heavy downpours and flooding, increased drought, greater sea level rise, more intense storms, harm to water resources, harm to agriculture, and harm to wildlife and ecosystems."
Critics of the finding say it's far from certain that warming will cause any harm at all. The Chamber of Commerce cites studies that predict higher temperatures will reduce mortality rates in the United States.

What's basically happening here is that the EPA is trying to get "Greenhouse Gases" to be covered under the "Clean Air Act," which currently only regulates the amount of toxic emissions that industries and products are allowed to produce.

My question is this: What is the EPA _really_ trying to accomplish with this? Covering CO2 under the Clean Air Act would completely hamstring American businesses, forcing them to severely cut CO2 emissions. At this point, that is barely even technologically feasible, much less cost-effective, much less profit-producing. So what, are they _trying_ to bankrupt America businesses? Are they _trying_ to return us to the Stone Age? Are they _trying_ to give American companies as much of a handicap as possible in the global market, such that they will now have to compete with now even cheaper alternatives made in countries that don't have such off-the-wall regulations?

I hate to resort to calling the EPA malicious, because I want to believe that they think that what they are doing is right, but, seriously, that's the only alternative. They certainly aren't trying to _actually_ clean up the air, since worse offenders than the USA already exist and won't be affected by this law at all. In fact, I would speculate that these countries are simply going to grow and gobble up whatever materials we're no longer able to use under this law, and completely take over what little markets American products still have a place in.

This only effect of this law will be to hurt businesses, and they know it, and they're fighting back. And make no mistake, this isn't just Large Evil Corporations, either, this includes literally millions of "little guys."

True. I think that's something that's hugely overlooked---energy is becoming not only a hammer for the big corps to put the hurt smaller businesses, but the regulations are also suited that way such that only large corps are either getting paid or will meet or be excluded from the energy regs.

Also from the article summary:

"and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end."

Umm, no. Scopes lost in the trial. That said, the public perception of the trial was that the claims made against Scopes were ridiculous. But saying scientists won is wrong from a historical perspective, the judicial decision standpoint, and even the current, modern day standpoint where (the extent of) evolution is still debated today.

I hate to resort to calling the EPA malicious, because I want to believe that they think that what they are doing is right, but, seriously, that's the only alternative. They certainly aren't trying to _actually_ clean up the air, since worse offenders than the USA already exist and won't be affected by this law at all.

Come the fuck on. You cannot honestly believe that the US government, which depends on tax revenue from American businesses and their employees, would intentionally handicap said businesses? To what end? Stop trying to turn a legitimate difference of opinion into some sort of battle between good and evil.

As far as the "worse offenders" go, the EPA doesn't exactly have jurisdiction over other countries, so it's a moot point. You're presenting an imaginary alternative -- that the EPA could somehow regulate greenhouse gases in China, India, etc. -- as some sort of evidence that this is only intended to bankrupt the EPA's revenue stream? Get a grip.

My question is this: What is the EPA _really_ trying to accomplish with this? Covering CO2 under the Clean Air Act would completely hamstring American businesses, forcing them to severely cut CO2 emissions

This is completely and utterly false. In other words, it isn't true. Case in point: Germany, like many other EU states has implemented a carbon tax [wikipedia.org] to limit CO2 emissions. It's working in that Germany's emissions are now below the Kyoto accord requirements [dw-world.de]. All this, yet Germany's economy is recovering from their recession [euobserver.com], and the recovery is faster than the U.S. recovery is. Lastly, the carbon taxes have all been projected to increase the number of jobs [feasta.org], not "hamstring" businesses like you say:

The positive effects of the ecological tax reform were highlighted by the Federal Environmental Bureau (Umweltbundesamt) in early 200210 when it stated that by the end of that year, its projections showed that ecotaxes would have reduced CO2 emissions by more than 7 million tonnes while at the same time creating almost 60,000 new jobs. Other researchers 11 were even more positive, saying that between 176,000 and 250,000 new jobs would be created. These figures were based on the assumption that the trade unions would moderate their wage demands by linking any increases in gross pay to changes in prices and productivity.

So when you look at the actual evidence, carbon taxes do pretty much precisely exactly the opposite of what you said. Do yourself a favor and stop reading talking points written by Exxon.

It would classify CO2 under the same classification as Asbestos, Chloroform, and other dangerous toxic chemicals, attempting to effectively limit emissions by orders of magnitude. That's not cutting it in half, or even a third. It's cutting it down by a factor of TEN.

"They are trying to get the courts to rule on whether Global Warming will be _harmful_ to humans."

They should say it in a language business people understand. I.e. Money. Any Global Warming regardless of the cause will give sea rise which in turn displaces millions of people living near the coasts (global cost will be many billions). Plus the loss of every beach on the planet wiping out all coastal businesses dependent on beach tourism (cost again in many billions). Plus crop yields affected world wide (cost again in many billions). (Thats just 3 examples off the top of my head). Also when I say billions thats the very low end of the cost range. For example, the global cost of wiping out (or protecting) every coastal city thats even just only 10 meters (or less) above sea level must be way off into the trillions range globally. They could probably equate just sea rise with a global cost in billions per extra meter of sea rise. Thats a graph business people would understand.

But I deeply suspect these business people are not looking for the truth (whatever it is), they are instead looking for an excuse to use, regardless of any truth. Because as always, they are focused on finding ways to increase their money. As they say, "Follow the money". What do business people have to gain from this legal action?... Money. Otherwise they wouldn't take the time and money to start legal action.

The EPA's goal is to keep the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below a certain level (probably 550 ppm). It's exactly analogous to their other regulatory activity, where they limit the levels of mercury in water or arsenic in playground soil.

Will it hamper American business? Sure. The same way the other regulations have hampered American business -- business would love to sell arsenic-laden playground soil, or pump mercury into rivers, if by doing either of those things they could increase their profits. We hamper business to prevent them from valuing money over people's lives, or over the health of the environment. It's sadly necessary to do so.

And yes, plenty of non-US businesses are spewing CO2 and pumping out mercury and feeding their children sweet, tasty arsenic. I'm sure the EPA would love to stop them but can't. They can only make sure the US is safe. When dealing with pollutants that cross borders -- like CO2 -- they're going to need help from international treaties. But that doesn't absolve them of trying to keep our own house in order in the meantime.

Oh yes please, PLEASE continue like this. CO2 reduction is BAD for American companies!!! In the mean while, here in Denmark we will develop CO2 reduction technology like insulation, [rockwool.com] biofuels [novozymes.com] and windmills [vestas.com]. Ten years from now, you can then come back to this forum and ask yourself why Uncle Sam lost all its jobs to a "socialist" welfare state.

Trust a representative of a "'socialist' welfare state" (your words) to fail to understand the Broken Window fallacy.

When you impair efficient economic activity via aggression (e.g. by coercing others into reducing CO2 emissions without substantial evidence of harm) you inevitably create a wealth of opportunities for commerce related to working around or repairing the damage. At a naive first glance this looks like an improvement; visible activity exists as a direct result of your actions. The problem, of course, is that this activity is far from free. Had you just left things well enough alone the resources being spent on workarounds and repairs would have been available for more productive ends; because you could not resist the impulse to "help", however, all must bear the costs of first deliberately breaking a working system, and then fixing it (assuming it is even possible to do so in full), and the resources thus expended are gone forever.

Aggression can sometimes bring wealth to those who employ it, but only at an even greater expense to others. It can never result in a net improvement for all involved.

Trust a representative of a "'socialist' welfare state" (your words) to fail to understand the Broken Window fallacy.

You are missing the point that 'green' technologies are more efficient. How do you imagine US companies are going to compete when their European competitors are producing twice as much for the same energy investment?

The broken window fallacy makes a number of implicit assumptions. If you smash the window and then replace it with double glazing, for example, then it no longer becomes a falacy; the people installing the window benefit from the work, but the person having the window installed also benefits from the lower heating and cooling costs and after a while recoups the cost of having the new window installed. Their cost of doing business is then lower, and they can undercut the shop across the street that didn't have its window smashed and is paying twice as much to keep the shop warm.

You are missing the point that 'green' technologies are more efficient.

I'm not missing the point, I'm saying that it's irrelevant. If the efficiency gains of "green" tech were sufficient to justify the costs (in the opinions of those paying for them) then there would be no need to encourage their adoption by force.

The same counter-argument applies to your broken-window scenario. The owner could have replaced his or her own window with a double-glazed variety at any time. That this was not done proves that the owner did not consider the replacement worthwhile--there was a benefit to be had, perhaps, but other things took priority. When you break the window the owner gets the benefit of the double-glazing, but is also forced to forgo these other goods which the owner considered more urgent, resulting in a net loss.

What it comes down to, really, is sheer arrogance. You're claiming that you know better than others how they should utilize their own property, that by forcing them to take actions they would not have chosen of their own free will you can improve their situation. Why? Because you're better than they are, of course. Because you know best.

Adult human beings are not game pieces to be manipulated for your own ends, or young children--or pets--requiring your governance "for their own good". They are free agents, self-owners, deserving of a chance to make their own choices, and mistakes, regarding both themselves and their property.

If the USA took all of its money from defense and put it into Healthcare or "Green Tech," then yes, we'd be able to claim advances in those areas.

Man, that sure is a lot of defending we've been doing in Iraq for the last six goddamn years. People whine about Obama spending a trillion dollars to bail out the American economy, when we've spent three times that much bailing out Iraq socially, and it hasn't worked; it just makes no sense to me.

For the first time in 6 years the Iraq war is INCLUDED in the budget. Part of that 1.8 trillion dollars is the war that George Bush kept off the books the whole time he was in office.

TRY AGAIN

Do you have a citation? I do [nationalpriorities.org]. It's the same site listed above, which is an anti-war site, btw.

To date, $915.1 billion dollars have been allocated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The national, state, and local numbers we provide are based on the total approved amounts through the end of Fiscal Year 2009.

In addition to this approved amount, the FY2010 budget shows a $130 billion request for more war spending. This would bring total war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan to more than $1 trillion. When all FY2010 war-related amounts are approved, we will adjust the counter so that it reaches the new total at the end of FY2010.

If you should compare the amount displayed on the numbers in our information sheets with the Cost of War counter, please note that the information sheets include all war spending approved to date, the same number that the counter will reach at the end of the 2009 fiscal year.

Well, they have a lot of money to devote to it since they don't have to spend ANY money on defense. If the USA took all of its money from defense and put it into Healthcare or "Green Tech," then yes, we'd be able to claim advances in those areas. But we can't, because we're the only Western World with a _real_ military and we use it to protect all of the other countries, and they know it. If America suddenly disassembled its Military, every other country would have to step up and pick up the slack to a have a force to send into every hotspot on the planet and to keep the other guys from attacking.

So you have already found the solution ! The only thing you didn't get right here ist that the rest of the world would actually do a LOT better without America's policy to play world-police.
I don't say that a little intervention here and there wouldn't be bad, it's only that the foreign wars that the US is fighting right now (and in the past) didn't exactly help anyone besides maybe Haliburton etc.;-)

In a nut shell, the evidence via ice core samples, tree growth rings, etc do show a correlation between increased global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels.However, it seems that the carbon dioxide levels increase about 40 to 50 years *after* the temperature increase.

Additionally, the archeological evidence coming to light now isn't that the naming of of Greenland by the vikings wasn't a propaganda triumph, but instead a quite literal statement. Interestingly enough, *farms* are being discovered under the glaciers.

Have you checked whether the Romans actually grew grapes in England, or are you just repeating stuff you read on the internet? I ask since you say it's impossible today. Which it isn't [allotment.org.uk]. Southern England has a proper wine industry [english-wine.com]. Today, it's even possible to grow grapes some places in Norway [online.no].

I know re-posting bullshit you've seen at +5, insightful before can be tempting, but half of your "empirical" evidence is plain wrong, and I haven't found sources for the other part (not that there's much point to it).

If global temperatures are going to go up by 2 C, then it would be useful to find out when the last time in history the earth was 2 C warmer than it is now and what happened as a result, no?

Because of the constant change in global temperatures (I assume you're not going to argue against the fact that there have been ice ages) it is likely that this temperature has happened at some point in the past.

In a word, yes. I find human causation of global warming to be unproven. What we have are a collection of climate models that only reflect the last 50 years or so and that show a correlation between increasing green house gases and increasing temperatures. Correlation is not causality.

What the parent poster and I both want to see is how well these models describe the past. That is, we want to see these climate models back tested over at least the several thousand years of history for which we have clima

The problem is with people who think it's been proven, or can be proven, that humans cause specific changes to the climate. Mathematicians deal in proofs; scientists don't. Human-caused climate change is a perfectly valid hypothesis, there's plenty of evidence to support it, and it may very well be true. My annoyance is with people who treat it as some unquestionable fact that is more fundamental than gravity or conservation of energy.

Well, surprised, anyway. Indeed. That Velikovsky was right about crashing planets, AIDS is caused by drug use, cold fusion works, the big bang never happened and cosmology is a fraud, Einstein was also a fraud, modern science doesn't work, evolution is a hoax, and perpetual motion would be possible, except for conspiracies of scientists.

Hogan has written some entertaining science fiction, and he's got a fairly broad grasp of a lot of scientific fields, but he suffers badly from blind arrogance -- he decides what ought to be right, and then focuses in on evidence to support it, dismissing evidence that contradicts it. Not that this is particularly uncommon, of course, but since his successful fiction career has earned him a wide readership, he's in a better position than most to spread disinformation.

Just remember that he's no Clarke or Asimov when it comes to science writing.

However, it seems that the carbon dioxide levels increase about 40 to 50 years *after* the temperature increase.

you've bought into a classic denier talking point.

just because during the natural ice age cycle CO2 lags temperature does not mean that CO2 doesn't cause warming. it's just that in the natural cycle CO2 doesn't just magically appear en masse, its released by an increase in temperature brought about by other changes.

during natural warming, increases in solar insolation due to changes in the earth's

In a nut shell, the evidence via ice core samples, tree growth rings, etc do show a correlation between increased global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels.
However, it seems that the carbon dioxide levels increase about 40 to 50 years *after* the temperature increase.

Additionally, the archeological evidence coming to light now isn't that the naming of of Greenland by the vikings wasn't a propaganda triumph, but instead a quite literal statement. Interestingly enough, *farms* are being discovered under the glaciers.

Add to that the medieval grape and wine industry on the coastland of Greenland. Vineyards. Doing something like that would be absolutely impossible given the current climate.

Sorry, vineyards in Greenland never happened. Even at the height of the Medieval Warm Period (the existence of which is not controversial and in no way undercuts current climate research) the Vikings were challenged to grown enough *hay* much less something so exotic and non-essential. A detailed discussion of the Greenland Viking's agricultural economy is given in Jared Diamond's book "Collapse".

You are probably confusing Vinland (Canda and New England) which the Vikings visited periodically and found nat

A problem I have been working on is pretty dicey. I think the problem is polynomially solvable (and not NP-hard), and a colleague of mine thinks that it is NP-hard. I am thinking of just getting a judge to rule on that.

Is to try to overrule the verdict of the scientific community because they don't like what it says. The climate change battle is over, and it is now a conclusive scientific consensus that it is happening and that human action is contributing to it. We need to slash our emissions dramatically, these guys just want other people to do it.

and it is now a conclusive scientific consensus that it is happening and that human action is contributing to it

Even the Bush administration admitted these things before they left the building. The idea of suing for scientific consensus is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard... no, wait, being forced to give creationism equal time in class is a more ludicrous idea. But this is close...

It's not a philosophy. It's fiction. It's a _STORY_, not a (to quote) "study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument."

It's as much philosophy as anything in existentialism is. Read up on Hume and the positivists. Or even more so, Zeno and the Stoics. Just because it doesn't necessary fit the abstract of your PHIL 101 class doesn't make it not philosophy. I reject your selective definition, as raise you this one:

philosophy (f-ls-f)n. pl. phi-los-o-phies
A system of values by which one lives.

Something tells me that Joe and Jane Conservative dont want their kids exposed to any of this stuff and the "teach creationist" movement isnt a way to broaden our understanding of religion but a bald-fa

Is to try to overrule the verdict of the scientific community because that verdict is going to reduce many business's profit margins and put some of them out of business.

Let's not beat around the bush and cut straight to the chase: they want the court to rule in favor of either economic well being or environmental well being. It's no coincidence to me that this hand is being forced as our country comes out of a lengthy and somewhat painful recession and the people in power now many nod toward the environment unlike the people in power for the past eight years. It's not that the commerce people "don't like it"... it's more so that it has a very measurable effect on them a

As a follower of Objectivism (more properly called Opinionism, unless you can explain the method by which you guys are sure your view on the world corresponds directly to the reality of it...) you obviously think that a minority opinion is better than a majority opinion.

However, in the real world scientists require a basis of consensus to build the next level of research on. Physics would get nowhere if we constantly had to prove the laws of gravity to retarded cranks such as yourself in the name of inclusiveness.

1. You are engaging in a straw man fallacy, because no model of man made climate changes predicts an increase in global temperatures every single year; there will be fluctuations

2. You are opening your idiotic noise hole without citing any evidence of 'consistent temperature declines from 2002-2009'. You expect us to just take the word of some AC wanker.

3. You are in fact, plain wrong about there being a 'consistent temperature decline from 2002-2009':http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080418112341.htm [sciencedaily.com] - 2008 was the second warmest year after 2002, meaning that it was hotter than 2003-2007 and thus there cannot possibly have been 'consistent temperature declines'

So you've opened your mouth, spouted off something factually incorrect, the admonished scientists for not predicting your factually incorrect information despite the fact that, even if it were true, it wouldn't actually impact on the correctness of their real life models.

Do you mean the slight dip in average global temperatures [nasa.gov]? As you can clearly see in he graph, there have been several such "unexplained" declines in the last 100 years, but the overall trend is painfully obvious.

So an organization that loves to complain, loudly and vocally, about "judicial activism," now wants judges to rescue it from the policies of the Congress of the United States and the unary Executive that they helped to create? Now that's a rich vein of hypocrisy.

The 'business community' wants to put Climate Change on trial to test the veracity of the data. However this really means that the don't believe the data is true and just want someone powerful to side with them

But if the trial goes through and the judge supports the climate change data, will this actually convince these people that the data is correct? I'm guessing not.

Who cares if global warming is caused by humans or not? Do we actually need to prove that to reach the conclusion that polluting its own environment is a rather stupid behavior for any living being?

That's flawed thinking. We pollute our environment because we do things that we consider more important than the damage we do to the environment. That is the benefits are perceived to be greater than the costs. It would be stupid to pollute to the point that the costs vastly outweigh the benefits (for example, to pollute the Earth to the point that humans can't survive unaided on its surface even for brief times). Similarly, it'd be stupid to treat the elimination of pollution as the sole purpose of humanit

What is the ideal temperature for the planet? Without human intervention the planet has been warmer (ice-free poles) and the planet has been cooler (glaciers covering much of North America, Europe and Asia). The "catastrophe scenario" of high average temparature is and what should be on trial, not that warming has taken place.

We're after all not sitting over man made laws. Then, by all means, the court would be the correct place to go.

We're sitting over nature's laws here. And as much as we deem ourselves important, nature doesn't care jack about our laws. She has her own set and they break ours any time. You can rule as much as you want that this hurricane can't go through your home town, if you put it to the test you'll notice that your law is ignored with impunity and ther's jack you can do about it. "I hereby fine the storm a fine of 20 million dollars..." is that what you want to say about it if it dares to ignore your law, little man?

Global warming is or is not. That's something scientists can find out, if anyone. No court can make a final decision on that.

Oh... OH! It's just about liability, we don't give a shit about whether or not the planet is doing the Dodo, what matters is whether we have to pay for it? Ok, my bad, carry on. Hope your money buys you another planet when you win this case and then mommy decides you weren't.

Answer me this: Can you risk being wrong? Do you have a spare planet, just in case? Personally, if there's even a small chance that we're going to heat up our blue marble beyond the point of what we commonly call "habitable", I would try to avoid it. Just in case. 'cause... well, dunno about you, but I don't have a spare planet in my back yard where I can go when we trashed this one for good.

Global Warming is not being put on trial. We know it's happened, it's happened many times in the history of the earth, so has global cooling. What is being put on trial is the idea of humans causing it or contributing to it. Everyone is bitching about the corporations because they are about money, well let me tell you what, the scientists are trying to keep their funding too.

Once again we see an over simplification. Why are those who don't believe GW is caused by man referred to as not thinking it's real? They're not the same. I can accept that global temperatures are rising without being convinced that a) it's mankind's fault and b) we have to throw money at it. The debate has been politicized and therefore forever tainted. The science has been lost and those involved pushed to their respective sides so much so that the truth is getting lost. We're all citing our science celebs in some kind of battle royale of evidence. The scientific debate will hopefully go on, as it should. Let's hope the political debate is stifled until some meaningful consensus can be reached.

That said, this trial idea is stupid and a judge who would take this case would be a fool.

The debate has been politicized and therefore forever tainted. The science has been lost and those involved pushed to their respective sides so much so that the truth is getting lost.

I will admit that the debate has been tainted, but the science has not been lost. It's all there in black and white for those that are willing to look for it and asses it honestly. There are still a lot of those people, even in the climate change debate.

So when an organization makes a statement, and a large number (over 100) of members of that organization disagree with the statement and request that it be revised, you suggest that we should believe the official statement and disregard the protests of the actual members?

I don't suggest this. I'm not expressing an opinion about the content and support of that petition; I'm stating a fact: you lied by presenting the opposite of what the APS supports as if it was the APS.

Um, we HAVE been seeing this cooling trend for a few years now, which is why misanthropic environmental hate groups have been trying to scrub the phrase "Global Warming" from the public lexicon and replace it with "Global Climate Change." See how clever that is? It now covers BOTH warming and cooling.

As another poster pointed out, the dip that you refer to [nasa.gov] is still above the temperature for the entire preceding 100 years and is smaller than several other dips that occurred in that period. There are several reasons that 'climate change' is preferred over 'global warming':

When some people hear Global Warming they think 'I wouldn't mind warmer weather, this sounds good.'

A lot of people seem to only hear the 'warming' part and ignore the 'global' part, as in 'it's been cold here, therefore global warming must be wrong.'

The climate is a chaotic system, and once it swings away from one equilibrium point it's very difficult to predict exactly where it will land. With most models, the difference between conditions that will end in desertification for a region are very close to those that will end with glaciation. Neither of these is particularly good for humans, but the difference is like balancing a coin its edge and then flicking it. It's difficult to predict which side it will land on, but it's pretty easy to predict that it won't land on the edge.

Having read some of the posts in this discussion, I'm starting to think chaos theory should be taught in high schools, although I'd have thought that the typical Slashdot reader would have at least a basic grounding in the subject.

And I still fail to see how limiting CO2 emissions in SOME countries will actually solve the Climate Change problem....

You're right. And if SOME people stop killing other people, what's the use? Others will just continuing killing people.

Back in the day, Iceland still practised blood feuds. With a limited population, this was a very very bad thing, as they were effectively endangering themselves as a species because they were killing each other faster than than they could reproduce. So the families got together and agreed to put an end to blood feuds. Obviously some families had to set the example, despite being the latest victims in the feuds, and yet they managed to put survival ahead of honour.

We have the same issue currently, just on a slower but much larger scale, and instead of honour it's money on the line.

Sometimes you need to set an example for others to follow. Once upon a time, this was what the United States purported to do. Now the US apparently refuses to set an example unless they can get a monetary advantage from it. And I suspect that even if they get a monetary advantage, they'll still refuse if they can get a larger monetary advantage by refusing to be an example.

I suspect that one of the best things that could happen for US politics would be to reform political fund raising laws slightly:0) Make companies non-human entities1) Make it illegal for companies to donate money to political parties and candidates2) Make an upper limit of donations of $100 per year.

That way you'd end up with a system, where a political campaign doesn't end up costing hundreds of millions of dollars (since no political party could afford it). This would make the playing field a lot more even for outsider parties. It'd minimize the influence of huge conglomerates of companies, and improve the influence of individual citizens instead.

But who am I kidding? Why would the ruling parties (D and R) cut their own money trains and death grip on the political process?

Because there are other benefits to reducing CO2 such as not having to rely on security of decreasing fossil fuel resources.

If a big country like the US can make the shift to renewable, green power and simultaneously cut unnecessary wasteful power usage it will have a competitive advantage in the world. Other nations like China will then have to follow or face getting left in the dust again. The green technology market in itself has the potential to be massive too, and nations like China will want their cut

If a big country like the US can make the shift to renewable, green power and simultaneously cut unnecessary wasteful power usage it will have a competitive advantage in the world.

I'll bite. What competitive advantage will we have, exactly?

And if using renewable power is so advantageous, why do we require legislation to make it happen? If it were profitable, wouldn't those people who are concerned solely with money be leaping in to reap the economic benefits?

Given that most of the goods produced by those coal-powered factories in China are for export to the USA, slapping an environmental tax proportional to the pollution generated in manufacture on all goods sold in the USA irrespective of where they were manufactured would do the trick. It would also give a big boost to US businesses who are already complying with EPA regulations and getting power from hydroelectric dams because their products would be hit by a much smaller tax.

The problem with the current regulations is that they put the penalties at point of production, not at point of sale, so the cheapest way of complying with them is to ship your manufacturing overseas.

The minutes of a meeting of scientists cherry-picked by the UN for their universal agreement with the man-made global warming hypothesis hardly counts as a credible source. "Everyone agrees with us" is not a scientific argument. Saying it over and over again doesn't make it true.

Someone linked this [wikipedia.org] on/. a while back, and I thought I'd link it again.

"It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."

Disclaimer: I shop local, walk to the grocery store with my cloth shopping bag, I recycle, and keep driving to a minimum -- I fill up my tank maybe once or twice a month. My family's energy usage is very low. While I'm an advocate for a personally responsible lifestyle, I have many many reservations about the "Green" movement and the scientific rigor used to arrive at such a consensus, and especially many of the illogical financial programs derived so that people can profit from it ("cap and trade"? "ca

It's a problem that involves international policy and science. Hence, you have governments sending their scientific experts to talk about it. Policy is done by governments, and science is done by scientists. That's what it's got to do.And note that academies of science all around the world support the IPCC's finding. Do you think they know a bit or two about science? Or do you trust Faux News to get your "facts" instead?Your denialism is about as misguided as that of truthers, birthers or moon landing denia

The IPCC "does science" by performing the most tedious and thankless part of the scientific method - "peer rieview". It's a serious contender for the largest, most thourough peer-review execises ever undertaken by mankind.

The contents of it's reports read like the soylent green oceanic survey, observations show it's two decades of forecast have proven to be on the conservative side, insurance companies have been including thier forecast

Do you subscribe to any general or climate related scientific journals? Because the consensus seems quite clear to me. Where we're lacking a consensus is in marketing material directed at the general public, but that will remain the case so long as there is money to be made. Don't mistake one for the other.

Exactly. There is still very little _EVIDENCE_ of mankind-created global warming.

I don't think you understand the scientific method. Global warming with manmade causes as a major factor, is the most supported scientific theory by a large margin. As far as actual scientific theories go, it has been supported by more evidence and testing than any other theory and that is reflected in peer reviewed scientific journals.

If you're truly looking at this scientifically you need to do more than attack the methodology of one or two studies or a meta study. That's already been done as part of the

For example, right now (since 2000) we have global cooling (around 0.5 degrees).

That is extremely misleading. If you take the look at the chart [wikimedia.org] of local temperature average and then tell me "The temperature is decreasing, actually"... Technically you aren't actually lying but either you are very close to that or very stupid.

We are also heading towards a small ice age, our eliptical orbiting around the sun is about to change as it does "frequently" leading to us being further away from the sun in the coming millennias.

Yes, in 10 000 years from now, here is supposed to be 100 meters thick ice. But when it comes to climate change, we care about what happens a century or two from now.

The IPCC still refuses to provide either the data from which they created their apocalyptic graphs from, or the models they used to do the predictions. This goes massively against the scientific standpoint of providing an open view into research to allow valid verification or falsification.

At this point it is difficult to take anything you say very seriously. However, scientists all aroun

So if you're betting on a global conspiracy, then which one is more plausible:1) Thousands of scientists nearly unanimously coming to conclusion of AGW.2) Several tens of writers (mostly NOT climate-scientists) funded by money directly linked to fossil fuels.?

We still can't predict [...] the weather, [...] with accuracy in a given year or a decade, let alone centuries.

I'm often reminded of an article I once read in which a scientist was discussing turbulence. He explained how if he poured some cold milk into a hot cup of coffee, without stirring, the currents and turbulence meant that it would be all but impossible to predict the temperature at a specific point, 30 seconds or a minute from now.

"Of course", he said, "we can very accurately predict its temperature one hour from now".

Not a direct analogy, but while I can't get an accurate prediction of whether it will rain in my garden one month from today, I have a much better chance of predicting the mean temperature of the whole planet, over the whole of 2012.

No, this group is like a union for business, it speaks what a handfull of it's members think.

Most corporates are actually calling for regulatory certainty, they are sick of the vaugeness in their planning that is caused by politicians bickering. They want to know what environment their business will be operating in 5-10yrs from now when the projects they are starting today become operational.

A coal fired plant itself is a 50yr engineering/business investment. Those corporates without a major interest

Because that isn't the global warming argument, and you know it. We have very real data that shows average temperatures are warming, and at a much faster rate than we are aware of in our planet's history. This is undeniable. One theory is that this warming trend is cause by the industrial revolution. We are releasing millions of years of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in a matter of decades. This is also undeniable.

The rest is a cost benefit analysis. If we act, and this theory is wrong, we get cle

Well, because science has established a very strong relationship between the rise in CO2 levels (and methane, and a variety of other 'greenhouse gasses), and a rise in the general temperature of the planet. This is happening at a very accelerated rate, compared to swings that have happened before in ice records and various other sources that show a swing in temperature.

The knock on effect of this warming is that Australia is facing the worst droughts in its history, coral reefs are dying (as they can only